Reflections & Learnings from Speaking at WomenTechMakers Event

About a week ago, I participated as a speaker at the WomenTechmakers Berlin event with the theme #daretobe. It was a great pleasure for me to share my learning through my career journey, because what I came to realize, we go through many stages in our careers, and it's important to learn the skills that allow smoother navigation, and why not even fun with it! It's possible when we don't fixate on our expectations and how things "should" be and rather embrace self-discovery and say "Yes, to your universe".

In this article, I'm going to reflect on my talk preparation phase and my learnings from this experience. My goal is to empower others who aspire to be a speaker and to share the challenges that one may encounter when juggling motherhood/parenting alongside professional goals, and how to adapt and overcome them.

Preparation of the talk

First, let's start with the preparation, and here I want to share three key points. But before I have to mention that these points are specifically about this type of talk - which are usually 15-20 minutes long, not workshops or some other types of public speaking.

1. A talk's goal is not "teaching": You may think that you have to share something new or teach something in a talk, and it's indeed possible, but you have to pay attention to how you're going to deliver the information. No one wants to be reminded of boring university classes/teachers, right?

Besides, quite frankly 15 minutes cannot be enough to "teach", and finally, the question is: what's the audience looking for by joining the event? I'm going to suppose that the audience is coming mainly to have fun, gain new insights, and connect with others. Ok, so what's the goal of the presentation? It's to spark curiosity, create interest in a certain topic, or bring a different perspective.

I bet that the presentations that you remember, are those that really made you curious to hear what the speaker is going to say next, not those where you knew what was coming (for e.g when everything is written on the slides). Think of it as "entertainment" as Ivan Wanis Ruiz taught me. That's the secret to a lasting impression.

To achieve that, the speaker's words, physical moves, and presentation slides play an important role.

I'm going to suppose that the audience is coming mainly to have fun, gain new insights, and connect with others.

2. Practice before the real performance: Rehearsing is essential to giving an effective presentation. By doing so, you gain more confidence in yourself, and you get familiar with the content that you're going to present. Furthermore, it allows you to test the length of your talk so you can respect the time allocated for your speech during the event, which I believe is a very important aspect as well. To make your practice even more effective, practice in front of a smaller audience: your friends or family members.

Practice really helped me in fine-tuning my slides and it inspired me with better opening words! So don't skip it.

?The more you practice the better you’ll be, the harder you train the great in you they’ll see.?– Alcurtis Turner

3. Focus on ONE key message to deliver: One of my top 5 strengths in the Clifton Test is "focus", so obviously I cannot skip talking about the benefit of "focus" while preparing a presentation.

To identify the ONE key message, simply 1 question has to be answered:

What's the key message you want to audience to know?

And then summarize the value you're going to provide using this question:

What are the 1-3 takeaways that you're providing?

Answer them in the beginning and review your answers every time you progress in the preparation in order to check if you're staying on track with your goal, or not. Because chances are, if you're like me, you want to share with the audience all you know, however, this is not an achievable goal in 15-20 minutes (plus: what I said in point 1).

Behind the scenes of a mom's life

Now, let's talk behind the scenes about a mom's life challenges while working on this goal of delivering a talk.

The first challenge I faced, as many parents can guess: was "Child Sickness" (Actually I don't remember a week since the winter started, that didn't go by with one of my two kids sick :) ). I got the confirmation about the talk 3 weeks before its date. My son got sick about 1.5 weeks before, and I knew that I'm going to spend the 3 days before the talk alone with my baby. So, how did I make it?

I will split the challenges into 4 categories.

Time Allocation: As my kids were both at home the week I planned to work on the presentation, I ended up not being able to do it that week. Nights weren't an option, because:

It's impossible for me to find the right flow of thoughts for a presentation when I'm overtired.

So, I mostly worked on it on weekends when I had my "me time" on Sundays morning.

Resources Management: On the days I was alone with my baby, I had to bring a babysitter for a couple of hours some days to help me with childcare so that I can progress.

Stress Management: This part hit me hard on the last day before the talk. Each time I noticed stress levels are increasing while working on the presentation, I tried to do something else: House chores, taking a walk, talking to a friend, etc. I also made sure to have some time to relax and not work on the presentation, so that I give my mind space, which would be beneficial once I return to the presentation.

Inner-critic / Chatter voice management: That voice was horrible! The flow of thoughts coming to my mind about myself in the last 24 hours before the talk was so harsh! Blaming me for everything: "How did I not keep a tidy home?", "How much time is this preparation taking me?", "How much money I spent on this." Every aspect was turned black!

I couldn't believe that I, Sarah, the person who keeps working on my self-awareness and on self-improvement, face those voices within me. I guess, I just experienced a little bit of what people call it sometimes mom guilt. Luckily, I could silence that voice after many trials reminding myself that I wouldn't say that to a friend. and another thing that helped me to silence it, is practicing the presentation. It really gave me a boost of confidence and helped me focus back on the value that I want to provide to others instead of focusing on myself.

"I'm not perfect, but I'm good enough." Carl Rogers

That's it about my experience and behind the scenes. In the end, it was all worth it. I was humbled by the feedback and astonished by the big applause I got once I finished my talk. I enjoyed getting messages from attendees who related to surfing through the waves and it was clear to me that the key message I focused on was delivered. This makes me motivated to practice more and participate in more events so that I impact more lives positively.

Thanks for reading and hope you enjoyed it.

Finally, I want to thank everyone who supported me, and I want to thank Ivan Wanis Ruiz for the great course on Udemy "Public Speaking: A tactical Approach" without which I wouldn't be able to inspire and bring these results.